


A Fine Line

by stardropdream



Category: X/1999
Genre: F/M, Religious Conflict, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:25:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen is in mourning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fine Line

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ February 1, 2010. 
> 
> Deals with religion; I apologize if anything offensive is said. The opinions and thoughts of the characters are not necessarily those of the writer.

  
  
“You’re been standing out here for a long time now,” Aoki said, rousing Karen from her silence. She slanted her eyes up to him, her head previously bowed. She seemed vaguely surprised to see him for a moment before her eyes softened.   
  
“Has it been a long time?” she asked, clutching her crucifix and turning back towards the grave of the child she’d barely gotten to know and yet held so dearly. “… I hadn’t realized.”   
  
Aoki’s expression crumbled a moment, watching her back before moving to stand beside her, lifting a hand hesitantly to touch her elbow. She didn’t shy away, and instead closed her eyes.   
  
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked, because he knew better than to ask if she was okay, and to insist that everything would be okay. Not now, not while she was in mourning.   
  
She shook her head, and turned to him with a soft smile that just managed to touch her eyes, softening them as they shined with unshed tears that she quickly blinked away before he could notice them.   
  
“I’m sorry, if I’m worrying the others like this,” Karen said. She clutched her cross tighter, swallowing thickly as she collected her words. “I just…”  
  
“I—we understand,” Aoki reassured, and the hand on her elbow slid up to wrap an arm around her shoulder, holding her close. He gazed at the grave, his expression solemn, as well.   
  
Karen’s breath caught at the contact, but it rushed out quietly as she relaxed against his hold, focusing on saying a prayer for the child instead of the way his heart was beating so soundly and how she could feel it. She felt safe, something that she’d longed for the last few days. But she tried not to linger on it long.   
  
“It’s painful,” Karen confessed after a lengthy pause. “My faith, that is.”  
  
“Ah?” Aoki asked, taken aback by the sudden statement. He turned his eyes to her and she tilted her head back to look up at him, uncurling one hand from around the cross to brush her hair back, smiling painfully up at him.   
  
“Not always. Only… sometimes,” Karen whispered. She closed her eyes, acutely aware of the palpitations of her heart and trying to soothe the way she was shaking. She hoped that Aoki would not notice. She continued, “In so many ways, it offers hope and comfort to many people… but in other ways, it is so painful.”   
  
“I don’t understand,” Aoki confessed.   
  
Karen sighed, not from frustration but from gentle tiredness that saturated her very being. She wanted to lay down on the cool earth, over this child’s grave, and let herself seep into the earth, to give that child some kind of comfort, if only for a moment. But she knew, in her heart, that no matter what she did now, it would do nothing for that child’s physical body, only for her own well-being. And truly, Karen suspected that her heart could only break more before it could mend.   
  
“I guess in a lot of ways, I’m only nominally with the faith. I’ve thought about going back to the church, to confessing. I’ve pictured what it would be like, to have that poor soul sit and listen to me for hours as I confess from years and years without confession. In a lot of ways, these thoughts have made me question my faith. I wonder if I’ll ever manage to return to that time when I could have such undaunted strength.”   
  
Aoki remained silent, listening patiently.   
  
“We’re taught that when we die, we go to a place to be with the Lord.” Karen focused on her breathing, clenching the cross between her fingertips, her knuckles white. “When the judgment day comes… it was believed that the living and the dead both would rise and join in the end times, to be with God.” Her breathing was definitely not getting steadier and he felt his hold on her tighten, to hold her up and to keep her from collapsing into the ground. She smiled, and reminded herself to be strong. Her spine straightened. “But how cruel,” she whispered, gazing at the grave. “What kind of comfort can that be, when there are so many who are left behind?”   
  
The hand on her shoulder tightened, smoothed over her shoulder, as if afraid she was about to cry. But she was not.   
  
“I want so much to take comfort in that they are alive somewhere else, that there is nothing behind it and someday the righteous will rise again,” Karen murmured. “But the way this life is—it is so hard for me to keep my faith sometimes. Once a faith is shaken, it is hard to regain it, hard to accept when there are so many more questions.”   
  
“You didn’t do anything wrong, thinking this way,” Aoki said. “It’s painful, when the people you love are taken away from you. Even if you can take comfort in knowing they are somewhere else, they…”  
  
“They’re in a place that I cannot follow,” Karen murmured. She looked up at Aoki. “Not yet.”  
  
He smiled, his expression gentle. “There’s no shame in being sad.”   
  
“I know that,” Karen said with a shake of her head. “I know that I am sad and I know that being sad is natural, when in mourning.” She sighed. “But I cannot help but have these thoughts. To think that it’s painful to think of it that way. And I can’t help but think it, no matter how hard I try to think of other things.”   
  
“It’s understandable,” Aoki murmured. “You’ve been thinking of it a lot, it would seem.”  
  
“Yes,” Karen breathed. She nodded.   
  
“Keeping faith is difficult. But it’s in the nature of faith for it to be all we can do, isn’t it?”   
  
“… Mm,” she hummed, closing her eyes and murmuring one last prayer with a quiet ‘amen’.   
  
She stepped away from the grave, and from Aoki’s arm. It fell back to his side and she smiled at him, turning to move away with one last look towards the ground. Aoki walked with her and they walked in silence for a long moment, moving down the stairs leading downwards to the street, prepared to return to their homes and go their separate ways.   
  
“Despite all these pains, and despite all my questioning,” Karen said, looking straight ahead, her head held high, “There are things that I do not lose faith in.”   
  
“That’s all we can hope for,” Aoki said, voice gentle as always.   
  
“Yes,” she agreed. “I’ll believe as much as I have to, until everything turns out alright.”


End file.
